The battle between the Cybertron and Destron forces had grown fiercer than ever before. In an attempt to break this deadlock, Cybertron engineers developed two special missile launchers. These next-generation weapons, which can be wielded by Convoy alone, normally boast high accuracy, but with Convoy’s body covered in a special coating that effectively absorbs sunlight, their power and firing range are bolstered even further. However, since fighting for extended periods in this “Blackbody” state puts Convoy at risk of overheating, battles must be ended quickly.

Manga

Hydra’s comments

It’s excellent to see the involvement of longtime Transformer artist Yoshioka Hidetsugu in the production of the Hybrid Style Convoy Black Version. The theme of the toy was Generation 2, which is where the design of the launchers and the additional heads was derived from. Since Yoshioka also did the art for all the G2 comics pages included in toy packages, he seems to be a perfect match for this project, and this comic acts as a continuation of the Japanese G2 and E-Hobby G2 stories. Notice that the Galvatron fighting with Ultra Magnus is actually Galvatron II, the dimension-hopping alternate dimension Galvatron who also appeared in the UK Transformers comics. Another neat detail is that when Magnus’ faceplate cracks, we can see his mouth under it.

One curious point is that Convoy is in his original body– We’d assume that he’d still be in his G2 tanker truck body, the last form he was shown in. Of course the real reason for this is that product reflects Convoy’s original form. However, it was established in supplementary material that as of G2, Convoy has become able to utilize a variety of bodies suitable to the nature of a mission, so use of his original body for the Blackbody system isn’t too surprising.